Skip to main content

You could go left. Or you could go right.

Now that the semester is (almost) over and final papers are (mostly) done and I have (a tad) more free time, I thought I'd tackle NaBloPoMo: National Blog Post Month. Yes, I realize that it technically happened in November, but that month turned into an insanely jam-packed time for me and trying to fit in a daily post into everything else was just not going to happen. My hat is off to those who did, and do, on a regular basis.

I'm also grateful that Rosetta Thurman linked to the BlogHer list of writing prompts for NaBloPoMo. While I could blather for thirty days on my own, this list provides boundaries for me within which to write. And, as my  professor Greg Lucas likes to point out at every opportunity, boundaries make for a better story.

Sewing for a production, c. 1930s / by Sam Hood

On to the first topic: Share your professional "aha moment".

My goodness, which one? Would you like me to work backwards or forwards? Do you have a few days and lots of coffee? How about I bullet point some, in no particular order:
  • deciding arts administration was the career for me, after running a small theater for three years and wearing all the administrative hats;
  • seeing "Falsettos" at the local community theater and having my world turned upside down through live theater and knowing I wanted to share that feeling with others;
  • stepping out of corporate retail management and into nonprofit arts administration in order to be a mother;
  • writing my women-in-theater manifesto, meeting Sylvia who shared my views on supporting local women in the field, and producing -dash-, which brought the conversation about local quality opportunities for women in theater out into the open;
  • applying to graduate school for a degree in arts administration and delightfully discovering a deeper joy in my chosen field.
Some of these moments are culminations, other are beginning points for work still-to-be-done. A couple of them have rather dramatic background stories. But they're all a-ha moments for me, that is, specific turning points on the path that brought me here today.

Can you look back at your path and see the turns? What were your deciding moments? 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New Year, New You Vision Board

VISION BOARDS! Let's get a couple of things clear, right at the start. THERE IS NO WRONG WAY TO MAKE A VISION BOARD. THIS IS NOT SCIENCE. You believe that putting pieces of pretty paper on another piece of paper calls into your life your deepest hopes and dreams, then you believe it with all your heart and soul. These are inspirational devices, not architectural blueprints. Ok, now that we have some caveats taken care of, the briefest of background before we get to the supplies and instructions (OH MY GOD THIS IS WHY THE ONLINE RECIPE BLOGS ARE LIKE THIS) I've been making vision boards consistently every year for my birthday (ish, usually on the new moon closest to my actual natal day) for a decade and before that on and off since college. I've always considered paper art as my chosen visual artistic medium, so vision boards were right up my manifestation alley. At one point in my life I wanted to work in magazine publishing (scratch that, I still do) so buying and keeping...
Post a Comment
Read more

High Art vs Low Art

“The masses seek distraction whereas art demands concentration from the spectator.” - -The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin, 1936 Is there any more contentious question in the art world than the concept of “high” versus “low” I like venn diagrams. And shouldn't art really be in the middle?  art? Who gets to judge? What are the parameters in which to judge? There is no standard definition for either concept and personal explanations range from simple to incredibly complex. One common theory about how to explain the difference is high art is “popular” and low art is “unpopular”, that is, appealing (or not) to many people. This also links to another version of the difference: that high art fosters the widest connection between people while a smaller subsection enjoys low art. This is in direct contradiction, though, to the idea of low art being part of mass culture (raising yet another question of “is art culture” or merely a com...
Post a Comment
Read more

Theater in the Age of Netflix

I read a great article in the December issue of Fast Company titled " Retail in the Age of Amazon. " Long-time readers know of my penchant for following retail conversations and seeing how they are applicable to the theater world and this article was no different. (New readers: hello! do you think retail and theater overlap, too?) I sat down to write notes on all the topics and details from the article that I wanted to flesh out on for theaters. I thought it would be 4 or 5, since the article itself had 4 sections to it. Instead, I had TWENTY-TWO points to hit. To flesh out each of those points, even a paragraph a piece, seems a tad much for a blog post. Some of them I've written about before, like defining success on your terms and using heretical ideas . A lot of them are about how going back to basics and focusing on differentiation rather than competing at the same game can help retail businesses survive and thrive in the age of click-and-buy. This is...
2 comments
Read more